Posts Tagged ‘anxiety’

I’ve got a much longer post in the making about returning to work and all that jazz, but right now I just need to whine. The other post doesn’t portray much of how I’m really feeling. It is about recovery, yet at the moment that seems like a strange concept.

I feel crap. Not just a little crap, but really crap.

I’ve been trying to avoid admitting this, but pretending things are okay never does me much good. Maybe if I’m more honest and accepting of how I feel, it will help to ease the pressure a little? I am trying so hard to keep functioning that I am probably making myself worse. I don’t know, but I need to do something and I hope that writing about it will help for a moment.

My mood has dropped. Not just a little bit, but a lot. I could feel depression creeping up on me again, but this past 10 days or so have been far, far worse. During the past week, I have felt worse than at any other point in the last six months. My mood slumped at the end of September /early October, but it didn’t slump this far or this fast. Things had picked up quite nicely since then (and the increase in Reboxetine) and I thought it was just a temporary blip, but now I feel awful and I’m less sure it will be temporary this time.

Every morning is a real struggle at the moment. It is hard for anyone at this time of year, waking up when it is dark and cold outside, but this is more than just winter blues. When I wake up from yet another night of broken sleep and nightmares, I feel the familiar cloud hanging over me. It is a cliché, but it is definitely there, dark and cold, looming over the bed. I realise that it’s back. Depression is here and I am hit with a daily dose of disappointment that I haven’t woken up feeling any better. The sense of dread about yet another day hits me and I want to hide under the cover and never come out.

I know I need to keep functioning and I am forcing myself to keep going, but it is getting harder. On some days I have to go to work and there is plenty for me to do the rest of the time, so I have no choice but to keep going. I force myself out of bed, but it is getting later and later and the incentive to do so is diminishing. I was making myself get out of bed by 9am at the latest, no matter how badly I’d slept the night before, but I can’t do that now. Most mornings I am forcing myself up at 10am, but it was later than that yesterday. If it carries on like this, before long it will be lunchtime before I usually get up. I am doing my best to stop that happening.

I feel guilty when I am like this. I chastise myself for being lazy, but I don’t want to be. I just can’t find the motivation to not be. I know the bloke would chastise me too and that makes me feel more guilty and makes me want to hide how I am feeling. It is nearly always the motivation that goes first. Motivation is tied to noradrenaline and that is what the Reboxetine is meant to be working on, but it doesn’t seem to be doing enough at the moment. I need to get it back, but even forcing myself to do things isn’t likely to help much. It will just tire me out and make me frustrated when I can’t seem to cope.

I am still going to work. I refuse to admit defeat on that. I can’t give up on work. I don’t want to let people down and I don’t want to admit that I can’t cope. I’m worried that everyone will blame this relapse on work and say that I can’t do it. Maybe work is to blame, but I don’t see how it can be. It is not stressful and I was enjoying it at first. It felt really good to be going back and I had definitely missed it. I was being careful not to push myself too hard. My four hours a week were going really quickly, but as my mood has dropped, time has slowed down to a crawl and my last few shifts have felt excruciatingly long, despite being so very short. I have been struggling to find the motivation to go as well and have arrived late a few times because I had been putting off getting ready. My concentration appears to be slipping and I have to keep stopping to remind myself of what I was meant to be doing. I had run out of work the other day as well, so it felt like a complete waste of time and boredom was not helping my mood, but I have now got something new to do, which made it a little easier today. I will manage though. I have to.

I am struggling to do much else at the moment though. Fighting depression and carrying on with work is sapping all my energy. There is housework to be done, but I am trying to get by with the bare minimum. I sit and stare at the laptop, but I don’t do much with it. I am barely bothering to read blogs or even the news at the moment. I spend too much time hitting refresh on facebook or hotukdeals, because they require little attention. I leave emails unanswered or unsent because I can’t concentrate long enough to write them properly. I am trying to knit a hat for my sister’s Christmas present, but it is slow progress and I keep making mistakes, despite switching to an easier pattern. I tried to go Christmas shopping on Monday, but I was so indecisive I barely bought anything and it took the whole day instead of the few hours I had planned. I have voluntary stuff to do – website updates and press releases to write, but I am putting it off.

I did manage to cope with fundraising at the Christmas Fair on Saturday though, which was a relief. I had been dreading it because I didn’t know how I was going to cope. Adrenaline helped get me through the day, which was a long one to say the least, but I survived. I was working with a decent bunch of girls for most of the day, so at least I had some support and there were plenty of yummy cakes to cheer me up, but I was flagging by the end of the day. We raised a decent amount of cash, which I guess makes it worth it. I felt completely frazzled afterwards though. I had to go out for the bloke’s work do in the evening, but I was exhausted and didn’t really want to go. I did and it was a nice enough evening, but I think I’m still recovering from the late night and long day. Everyone else was drunk too and I was driving, so that didn’t help me enjoy it. My head was so fuzzy, I have no idea how we got home safely. Not good really.

I curiously did the PHQ-9 and the BDI the other day, because I saw reference to the PHQ-9 somewhere and I suspected my scores would show I was depressed again. Scores of around 20 and 30 respectively puts me right on the Moderate-Severe threshold on both scales. I don’t believe that it has got that bad so quickly and I think severe is pushing it, but moderate depression is probably a fair assessment at the moment. Strangely, my scores are worse in different areas to where they used to be, but it’s still higher than I had expected. My BDI score did get up to the late 50s/early 60s though when I was really unwell, so there is a long way to go before I get like that. I did a retrospective scoring for how I was during the summer, just to compare and I would have said my PHQ-9 was about 4 or 5 (not depressed/mild depression) and my BDI around 8 (mild depression?). Things have definitely gone down hill. I think my “natural” state is probably a little on the low side anyway, but this is more than that.

Physically I feel awful as well. Tummy troubles continue. I spent one afternoon last week rolling around in agony. The pain in my gut was just so bad and it came on so suddenly I didn’t know what to do. It was probably the worst attack that I have had and it took a few hours to settle down to a dull ache. My appetite was hit by it and still hasn’t really recovered. My bowels just can’t seem to find any sort of rhythm or pattern, no matter what laxatives or diet I am eating – eat eggs and I end up with diarrhoea, eat beans and I can end up constipated. It makes no sense at all.

In general, my body feels really run down. I have a cold sore and have had a few spots break out lately. I think I may have a urinary infection of some form. I’ve spent most of this week constantly needing to wee, although thankfully it hasn’t felt burny/stingy, so I’m not sure. Last night, a lymph node at the back of my head (behind my right ear, up from my neck) has swelled up and it is really painful. It feels like someone has hammered something into the back of my head and that they are constantly notching up the pressure. I couldn’t sleep at all with it last night. I had the same thing happen on the other side a while back and it took a few days to go down. I hope it does soon. I am not sure how much longer I can take this.

I went and saw Dr N this evening. I was hoping he could at least suggest something to fix my body, if not my mind. Sadly he didn’t have much to offer either. That may be partly because I didn’t know what to say to him. I didn’t tell him all that I wanted or meant to. I seem to have forgotten how to talk about this stuff and I keep forgetting things I should do or say.

He asked me what had triggered my mood. I said I didn’t know. Possibly the time of year, but I’m not really sure. He asked what support I was getting from the CMHT. Nothing is the answer I gave and the truthful one too. I had a phone call last week to tell me they’ve “closed” my case, because I no longer have a worker. They had forgotten to sign off my old CPA when my social worker C left, which was back in June, but someone had found it and said they would send it off to me so they could close my case. Dr N had received a copy too, remembering that there was an apology attached to the front. I don’t know what he thought about that. He asked what other support I have. I reminded him that I am still seeing Dr M as an outpatient, but I won’t see her until January now. He asked about the psychology referral. I’ve not heard anything. He sighed at that.

He mentioned that her last letter suggested that I drop the Reboxetine a few days a week to see if that helps the side effects. She suggested either going every other day – 6mg one day and 8mg the next or even 8mg in the week when I have to work or am at home alone and 6mg at weekends when I have more support. Dr N said he thought the latter may be worth a try, because he hopes that improving how I feel physically may ease my mental symptoms too. He doesn’t think 6 or 8mg will make that much difference either way to my mood, but it might help with the tummy troubles. I am not so sure about the idea, especially in light of my dropping mood. In fact, I’d even tried a few days on a slightly higher dose – 10mg (an extra half tablet), just to see if that could kick my mood back up quickly. No such luck though. I guess it is worth a try.

I didn’t know what else to say to him and in the end we just wished each other a good Christmas and I left. I walked out and finally started crying. I’ve needed to for days, but the tears hadn’t come. I don’t know what to do to stop this decline and I don’t feel like I have anyone to help me. I am scared about Christmas and January and all the memories that this time of year is dragging up. This time last year I was telling myself I just have to get through Christmas. I am doing the same now. The problem is, last time I got through Christmas, only to try and kill myself when January came. I don’t want that to happen again. I am not as bad as I was back then. Things have moved on a lot in the past year. I have hope that my mood can recover again, where as last year I had no hope at all, but I am starting to feel more and more helpless and I fear that I will always be waiting for the next relapse. I am terrified that every time I try to live a normal life, depression will come back and bite me. I don’t want that to happen. My mood has to pick up soon. I need to keep going.

This only seems to scratch at the surface of what I am thinking right now. I am scared. I am worried about what everyone will think. I don’t want to let everyone down. Everyone has been so pleased about the progress I had been making and seemed to be excited about me getting better. I had been so pleased too. I thought I was getting my life back. I am going back to work at last. I am driving again. Everything seemed to be getting back to normal. Things seemed to be going really well. Then I am hit with this slump in mood and I don’t know what to do with myself. I know recovery is a difficult process and I’m always going to have set backs, but this feels different. It isn’t just a bad day or two. Nasty thoughts are creeping back in. I am having to put on my happy face. Life feels like a struggle, rather than just being life. I hope it is just a blip. I really do.

I’m also scared about the diagnosis stuff being stirred up. I was recovering, medication was helping, my condition wasn’t pervasive and untreatable, so I couldn’t have had a Personality Disorder. If I’m getting ill again then people will probably start thinking that it was just a co-incidence and that I do have a PD after all. Maybe I am being paranoid, but I am scared about this. I was glad that I had responded to medication. I may have been treatment resistant, but at least I was treatable. Now I just feel like a failure. It will be back to the theory that I need therapy if I am ever to recover and I will be blamed for not recovering. No doubt I will never get offered therapy anyway, even if I need it, but I was hoping I didn’t need it. I don’t know. I don’t want to think about it. Whenever I think about what went on earlier this year about my diagnosis I get panicky, anxious and upset. It seems to hit a nerve and I have to stop thinking about it.

I hate feeling like this. We will see how things go. At least I have admitted it now. I have been carrying around these thoughts like a guilty burden. I have been secretly acknowledging the depression, whilst denying it in the hope it would go away and that no one else would find out. I feel like I am letting everyone down. I wanted to have a “happy ever after” for this blog and then I’m back here again whining about depression again. That isn’t what I wanted. Sorry.

(I started this post on Friday, whilst waiting for the bus. I didn’t get the chance to finish it, so I am going to post what I did then and complete the post before publishing it all together).

I’m sat at the bus station writing this on my phone, waiting for the bus that takes me to the office. I missed the connection as the bus from my village was running predictably late, so I’ve got a 25 min wait for the next one. At least my renewed disabled bus pass arrived before I got the bus this morning, saving me about 6 quid in bus fares today.

I am nervous. This is not the first time I’ve been back since I’ve been ill. I got over that hurdle a couple of weeks ago, but it doesn’t feel any easier a second time. On my last visit, I went to a meeting I was invited to. I used to be on the office forum, which focussed on employee engagement and office morale. The committee had stopped meeting after I went on leave, but the Senior Exec who was in charge decided it was time we revived it, so I was invited along. I thought it was probably a good way to get updated on the situation in the office and to do something work-related without too much pressure. It helps that I have a lot of experience in this area from my last role, so I thought I could handle it. Plus there was free breakfast so how could I refuse? I feared that a meeting with two Senior Execs and a handful of others might have been a bit much for my first trip to the office in two years, but I decided it doesn’t really matter what they think of me. Dr Occy Health didn’t expect me to go to the office to do any actual work, but I decided that it would probably be easier if there was a purpose to my visit and chatting about charity work and office parties didn’t seem like too much of a challenge.

At the start of the meeting I explained that I had been off on sick leave for a long time and that I was in the process of getting back in touch with work, with a plan to start returning part-time soon. I wasn’t sure about doing this at all. I don’t know if it is a good idea to have too many people knowing about my situation and I felt quite self-conscious, but I think it helped to set expectations and put my comments into perspective. I think I would have probably come across as strange if I didn’t put things into context. I am very behind with the latest news on clients and projects! Over two year’s absence can’t really be left unexplained.

I think I handled the meeting okay. I had things to say and as the only person there from my level, I could offer a unique position. This made me feel a little more useful than perhaps I had feared beforehand. I think if there were others at my level, I would have been tempted to stay quiet and I would have felt surplus to requirements, maybe even a hindrance. Compared to others, it would have highlighted how out-of-date I am. I also struggled to remember things, partly because it is so long ago and partly because my brain has been fried by depression and ECT. I had to think hard about how things were back then and what I would have said 2 years ago and it made it a struggle to keep up at times. Things have definitely moved on whilst I’ve been away (for example, the client I worked for last, is no longer a client), but reassuringly we were still discussing and facing many of the same issues we always have. The stuff I had remembered, was still valid and I still had relevant answers to give.

After the meeting, I took a hot-desk for an hour or so and started to trawl through my old inbox. I decided the best strategy was to skim-read subjects and mass delete. A request from two years ago is hardly likely to be valid any more, so I assumed it could be ignored. There were a few automated notices I had many, many times over, so I thought I better look at sorting those out. I sent a couple of emails to old colleagues to see if they could point me in the right direction, but most of the people I would have asked, have since left the company. Hopefully, someone will be able to help me stop them from coming though. Pretty much everything else went in the trash. I have probably missed a few things, but the chances are that if it is important, they will ask again.

I was struggling to keep my mind on the job. Part of this was probably a lack of concentration, but I think a lot of it was just down to how I felt about being back. I was reminded of how much I’d missed and what had happened before I went on sick leave. My mind was wandering back to those times and thinking about what happened and what went wrong. I felt a bit strange when I came across some old emails. Stuff from when all of this kicked off. Emails to HR and my old line managers about how I was feeling, what occupational health had said etc. I wish I hadn’t seen them really. I don’t want to go back down that road.

It was also weird to discover how much has moved on. So many of the old systems have been superseded and I have no idea where to start when I sign in. So many of my colleagues have gone, been promoted, moved client, moved office. I will have a lot of catching up to do when I get back. I will need to re-learn a lot of things and it will almost be like starting a new job, even more so because I will be starting a new role with a new team. I am worried though that with a year’s work and 3 years in the company under my belt, people will expect me to be experienced and know what I am doing, but I’m not sure I do any more!

I felt somewhat weird about the whole visit. On the one hand it was fine. I coped, I took part in the meeting, said something worthwhile and I don’t think I made an idiot of myself, but on the other hand I felt really out of place and uncomfortable. Despite the fact the meeting went okay, I have no confidence and I worry that I can’t do that job any more. I don’t have the confidence or the concentration. I am scared of going to meetings, talking and working with others, having to make decisions and everything else that comes with the job. I just don’t feel up to it.

The culture feels really alien too. Just wearing smart work clothes felt wrong. I used to love wearing my sharpest suit and heading into the office. I was happy when I drove through the office gates and walked in, laptop and security pass in hand. Work used to feel like the right place for me. I was good at my job, I knew that I was and I really loved it. Now I feel lost and out-of-place and uncertain if it is the right thing for me any more. When I walk in to the office now, I feel like someone who has got lost and ended up in the wrong place. It feels like there are all these people staring at you, wondering why you are there and thinking that you’re an idiot. I worry about looking confused, forgetting where things are or what the etiquette is. For months, the only people I really dealt with on a semi-professional level were doctors, psychiatrists and the like. That is a very different relationship to a working one. You don’t sit down with your manager and pour out your inner woes. You have to maintain a professional front, appearing calm and capable, even when you feel like crap and really want to hide under the duvet or break down and cry. I am not sure how long it is going to take me to adjust.

There was a small part of me that got a real buzz from being there though. There was a little spark of excitement at the thought of going back to work. Being there and taking part in that meeting, really reminded me of what I’d been missing. I like a challenge and to use my brain. I’ve not used it enough lately. I enjoy working with people to come up with ideas and I like to get involved with solving problems. It is good to feel like you are useful and to have something to focus on and think about. When you enjoy your work, it can be the thing you live for. I didn’t really want to leave the office and go home afterwards and it was hard to pull myself away at the end of my permitted two hours. I wanted to stay and work and be normal for a while. I wanted to forget everything that had happened over the past two years and just get on with my career and my life. I didn’t want to be ill any more. I don’t want to be ill any more.

I’m nearly at work now and staring at my phone to type this on the bus is making me feel queasy. I’m only going into the office for a couple of hours today. There’s no real reason for my visit and I could do what I intend to do there at home, but I thought it would be a good idea to try to visit again. I’m going to sit at a desk, read through emails and try to update my company CV. I don’t know how much I will get done, or what I will be able to do, but it is worth a try. After all, Dr Occy Health didn’t want me to try to actually work, so just being there is a good start.

Afterwards…

(I have written the rest of this post over a couple of days, so I will do my best to complete it and publish it now).

After my first visit to work – that meeting I wrote about above, I was completely drained by it. As I left the office, my mood started to crumble away from me. It was almost as if by leaving the office and getting back on the bus, I was leaving behind the normal world and going back to the mental one. My mood seemed to change accordingly. Whilst I was at the office, my mood was okay. I pretty much switched off my emotions and got on with the task in hand, doing my best to act normal and remember how I used to be at work. It didn’t go too badly, so I was hoping it was fine and that I had nothing to worry about. Unfortunately though, afterwards I felt really rubbish. I guess I had been maintaining the front and this can be exhausting.

It was really hard going back to the mental world. I didn’t want to. I wanted to stay at work forever and not go home. Being back at work gave me a few hours to pretend that everything was normal. It was almost possible to pretend that none of the past two years had happened. I was back at work, doing a job that I loved. I could forget the world of therapy, medication and psychiatrists and distract myself with a world of email, meetings and spreadsheets. Two and a half years ago, I was using work to distract myself from anxiety, suicide and a mood disorder, within half an hour of arriving at the office, I was doing the same again. If only that distraction and front could be maintained.

I was really anxious afterwards. I dissected everything a million times over. I went over everything I could remember from the meeting, to check I didn’t seem too mad or make a complete fool of myself. I have always worried about how I came across at work, but usually I could be fairly rational and pragmatic about it. Evaluating your own performance is a big part of the job, but it is not good to spend hours catastrophising, pulling apart everything you have done and then using it as a stick to beat yourself with. Unfortunately this time, my evaluation was definitely closer to the latter. I knew I was doing it, but couldn’t seem to stop myself. CBT – where art thou?

I felt quite panicky about the future. I worry about whether I could ever do that job again and where I fit in. The drop in my mood, level of anxiety and complete feeling of exhaustion afterwards only made this worse, because it confirmed my worst fears – that I wasn’t good enough and that I couldn’t cope any more. I was annoyed with myself, because I didn’t see how a couple of hours could make me feel so bad. I was angry at myself for being depressed and angry at depression for taking my career away from me and stopping me from working. I was really disappointed that although the trip to work went okay, the fallout from it was less good.

My second visit to the office was not too different to the first, except I didn’t have a meeting to go to. I was actually a lot more nervous beforehand this time. I hadn’t been feeling very good mood-wise anyway and had very little sleep, so I was even more worried about what effect it would have on my mood. I haven’t been sleeping well at all since the increase in Reboxetine – I’d forgotten how bad it could be for insomnia.

I had emailed the night before to reserve a desk, but the woman was still grumpy when I asked her which one. I didn’t arrive until about 11.45, due to missing the bus, so I was later than I’d originally said. She said she had only reserved it up to that time, so if it’s gone it’s not her fault and I will have to do without. I did not like the idea that I will have travelled all that way and that I may not have had a desk to work at, but thankfully it was still free and I could set my laptop up and get to work. I had problems with the LAN though. I could get on the intranet, but no external websites were working, which seemed a bit strange. I managed to get on to the support website and worked out how to fix it, but it still ended up taking a lot of my time.

I spent most of the time going through the latest emails, including a couple of responses to my enquiries from my previous visit. Still didn’t have any answers, but I was a step closer to getting them. I did feel a little overwhelmed when I looked in my inbox and saw that in a few days I had over 3 pages worth. Considering I am on sick leave, so I am not getting anywhere near as many as I would normally, it was a little daunting. One of the biggest problems before I went on leave, was the fact I often felt like I was drowning in emails and there were times when I just couldn’t bring myself to answer any of them. I would check what I was writing a million times and would get a feeling of doom every time I clicked send, even when the message was a simple one-line answer. I would look at the list and not be able to summon the motivation to do anything about it. Certain names would fill me with dread, because I knew it would be more work.

After my inbox, I wanted to log in to my company CV, as it will need to be updated before I start looking for roles or internal work. It took me ages to remember where I needed to log in! Once I was in, I didn’t know where to start. It is obviously very out of date. I noticed the skills section doesn’t increment the number of years experience you have had, so decided that was a good place to start. There was a lot of skills missing and I didn’t even finish completing that section before my time was up. I wanted to stay and finish the job, but quite sensibly I had somewhere to be afterwards, which stopped me staying all afternoon. I felt really lazy arriving at the office just before lunchtime and leaving only a couple of hours later. I’m sure people were looking at me as I packed up and left. They must have wondered where on earth I was off to at 3pm. Leaving before 6pm is just unheard of, so that isn’t surprising.

I did feel a lot worse again afterwards, although probably less anxious this time. I didn’t spend any time talking to anyone on that visit, so I had no conversations to analyse afterwards, which helped I think. I literally spoke to the woman at the reception, took my desk, worked in silence and then got up and left. This is the way everyone works in that office, so I wouldn’t have seemed anti-social or anything.

I am still not sure how I feel about work now after dipping my toe in. I am scared that I won’t go back. I am worried that when I see Dr Occy Health in a couple of weeks, he will be concerned at my drop in mood lately and he will delay my return even longer. I feel very conflicted about it. Half of me is desperate to get back, to put the past two years behind me and to get on with my life. When I was at the office I felt okay and seemed to be coping, so there’s no reason why I wouldn’t cope for longer. I think it will be good for me to get back to work and feel useful again. I have been getting bored at home and feel very worthless. So much of my self-worth was tied up in my work and I think it still is. I will never feel like I have recovered or improved until I finally get back to work. I was a lot better over the summer and felt pretty well, but I still wasn’t at full capacity. I still wasn’t able to work.

Now, I am very scared. I am worried that I will not be able to cope. I am very worried that I will go full-steam ahead into a return and that in a few months I will be back to where I was. I will manage for a while. I can put up a front and get on with my job and everyone will think that I am fine, but it wouldn’t last. When I get to the office, even if only for a couple of hours, I feel myself going back to my old ways. I want to bury myself in work and feel the urge to push myself too hard. I don’t want to go home after two hours. I want to go back to full-time and to have responsibility again. I survived almost a year of overdrive last time, but I suspect it would only take a couple of weeks to break me again. Maybe even a couple of days. I worry that just a few hours of work makes me feel so terrible afterwards. That can’t be a good sign. Maybe my stamina would improve, but what happens if it makes me worse first? I have been wobbly enough of late, without needing any extra stress and pressure, so I don’t know if it is a good idea. Yet the thought that I may never get back to work makes me feel so worthless, I may as well just go kill myself anyway. I need to go back.

We will see. I am going to try to go in at least one more time before I go back to Dr Occy Health. I may try to spend a couple of hours working from home too. I am now checking my work email most days, which should stop that getting too overwhelming. Just ten minutes each day is a place to start, right? I need to have another think about what else I can do before I see him and what I need to ask when I go back. Sometime after seeing Dr Occy Health, I am meant to be meeting the HR manager who is looking after me whilst my HR rep is on maternity leave, so I need to think about what I will tell her too. I don’t know yet.

I saw Dr M this morning. I’d not seen her for ages. It was back in July, just before I went to Europe (I haven’t written about my trip, but anyone following my twitter feed will know that I spent 2 and a half weeks InterRailing during July/August), so a lot has happened since then. She suggested that it was a good sign I hadn’t needed to see her sooner, but I indicated that it wasn’t especially. It probably would have been if I hadn’t have wanted to see her about a month ago. I couldn’t get an appointment then. This was the first Monday we could both do.

She asked about my trip. She was impressed and relieved that I managed on my own whilst I was away. It feels so long ago now, I didn’t really know what to say, other than that I coped, enjoyed most of it, but found it really exhausting. I could have told her more, but didn’t see the point. There was limited time and plenty of other things to cover.

We talked about things with the bloke. Before I went away, things between us had been somewhat up in the air. When I last saw Dr M, there was a very real chance that we would split up. I haven’t written about this here before now, because I don’t think the bloke would be overly comfortable about me sharing this with the world.

The whole idea of the trip to Europe, was to give us some time apart to reassess things. I was going to just take a “boring” holiday somewhere, but options are limited for solo travellers and I’d always wanted to go InterRailing, so I decided to give it a go. It also seemed like a great chance to test myself to see if I could be more independent and to cope on my own.

I’d talked about all of this at my last appointment and Dr M was keen to know what has happened since then. Things between us have settled down and pretty much gone back to how they were before things became difficult. It’s almost as if nothing had happened. Neither me, nor Dr M could decide if this was a good thing or not. On the whole, it is probably good. Things were not good at all when I left and it is nice to know that he missed me a lot, but it has also been a little disappointing. When I got back, we talked a bit about what had happened and how we should try to improve things and appreciate each other more. Unfortunately, it doesn’t feel like anything has changed or improved.

We talked about my trip to Occy Health. I explained what he said about not starting a proper scheduled return yet, but how we tried to think about the ways we can solve some of the problems that are stopping me from getting back to work. I told her that he’d said I could try to visit the office and that I managed to go to a meeting last week for a couple of hours, which she was impressed by. It was a really big step, so that’s good. However, she seemed disappointed that there was nothing further planned yet. I suggested that I will probably try to go in again in the next week or so, but I hadn’t decided when yet. She wanted me to try to commit to a time and hoped that I could start to go in on a more regular basis, even if it is only once a week for a few weeks. She thinks that a routine and commitment to going to work on a specific day, would help me prepare for it better. I said that is actually what I’d hoped for, but that Dr Occy Health wasn’t sure and she seemed to accept this, but she thought it would probably be okay if I chose to do it, rather than having my work-place imposing it on me. She may be right and I was considering this myself. I will try and decide when would be best.

We did talk about my mood and how it has recently dropped quite a bit. I don’t think she was too concerned or especially surprised, although she was possibly a little disappointed. She asked about the usual stuff . Sleep, suicide, anxiety… She was not surprised to hear of my nightmares or generally rubbish sleep (occasionally too much or usually too little and never feeling rested). I had to admit that suicidal thoughts had returned, although they were a lot less frequent and different to how they were a year ago. She hadn’t actually realised that the thoughts had pretty much gone away over the summer, which was a surprise. I’m sure I’d told her last time that I wasn’t really suicidal any more and that I no longer felt that life was completely hopeless. Although I can feel pretty awful at the moment, I have got my hope back that I can be well again. A year ago, I could never imagine a life without feeling horrifically depressed, so it was no wonder I could see no future and wanted to end it. I do get frustrated at the fact that I have got worse again. I wonder if I will always be waiting for the next relapse and if so, is it worth it? I am able to cope with these thoughts at the moment, as I still have some hope of a recovery.

We talked about the risk that I may do something impulsive if I have a particularly bad day. I told her there was no immediate risk of me killing myself and that I have no intention to make any detailed long-term suicide plans like I have in the past, but that I couldn’t guarantee that I wouldn’t just do something on impulse. I don’t tend to be impulsive and have never made the decision that way in the past, but if an opportunity presented itself, there are times when I can be very tempted to take it. She recognised this and I guess she knows that there is always a greater risk of completed suicide when people are either recovering or deteriorating. When you are really, seriously depressed, it is far too much effort to kill yourself, but when you’re having a bad day after a series of not-so-bad days it can seem a lot worse and you are also more likely to have the energy and drive to do something about it.

I mentioned that I felt that the arrival of autumn did not seem to be helping and she agreed that there was probably a seasonal element. She had noticed back in the spring that things seemed to improve a lot faster for me when the weather picked up in April, so it is natural, I guess, that things would get worse again when the summer ended.

We talked about my medication and she agreed that it probably needs a tweak, if only to help me get through winter. Her first instinct was to add Quetiapine. Apparently, it was licensed the other day in the EU as an augmentation treatment for Major Depressive Disorder, although she admitted that most psychiatrists had been using that way for a while anyway. She asked if I’d been on it before and I confirmed that I had. I was taking it along with Venlafaxine, back in February 2009 when I overdosed on it. She asked what doses I’d been on and I said I couldn’t remember but I did get right up to 550mg. She said that for MDD they use a max dose of 300mg, but I had been on that sort of a dose for a while too, so I’m not sure it would help. I also mentioned that it never seemed to help with insomnia and that I had put on weight last time. She said she didn’t expect it to help the insomnia and she seemed genuinely surprised about the weight. Although it didn’t help me with insomnia, I know plenty of people who find it knocks them out, so that seems a little strange. There are also plenty of people that have found it made them put on weight too, so I am not alone. Both drowsiness and weight gain are listed in the common side effects, so you would have thought she was aware of that. Anyway, I said no to Quetiapine.

The other options were to do nothing, increase the Reboxetine, swap the Reboxetine or try to add something else. I wasn’t sure doing nothing was a good idea and we both agreed that stopping the Reboxetine was a really stupid idea, as it is the first AD that has ever helped me. Reboxetine has shown that Noradrenaline is probably the key to my wonky brain chemicals and there aren’t many others that help on that front, so we’re not sure what else to do. She didn’t have any bright ideas of anything else to try really. If not quetiapine, then she said we’d probably be looking at augmenting with Lithium or another anti-depressant, but she wasn’t sure what would be best. She said she would have a look for some ideas though before I next see her and she was welcome to any suggestions I may have – so if anyone has any ideas, let me know. I’ve been on most of the common combinations already and my only real thought is perhaps bupropion, but it’s not licensed as an AD here (although it is used an awful lot in the US), so I don’t know if she’d give it a go. I know a couple of people who have found it helpful though, so it may be worth a try.

In the end, we decided that increasing the Reboxetine was probably the best option for now, although I am worried about how I will be with the side-effects. It is worth a go though and if it is too much then we will have to try something else. I hope it helps, without making me feel too awful. She said she’d get a letter sent to Dr N. I have plenty left at the moment anyway, so will just increase the dose myself for now. It only comes in 4mg tablets anyway, so it makes little difference. So yes. I am now going to be taking 8mg of Reboxetine. I didn’t actually tell her that I’ve occasionally taken 8mg anyway, when I’ve not been able to cut one of the tablets in half to make the 6mg. One day doesn’t make much difference though, but 8mg over a week probably will. We will see anyway.

After that, I remembered that I had also been for the therapy assessment. I told her what had happened and that I will probably be waiting for someone to come back from maternity leave. She named the person she thought it would be. We shall see what happens anyway. She isn’t impressed that I’ve been waiting over a year and was shaking her head saying “it’s probably only going to get worse, only going to get worse…” as she looked at her diary to book our next appointment. It really isn’t good.

Anyway, time was up then and I had to go. I see her again in 6 weeks, so we shall see how we go with the Reboxetine.

Aside from the therapy assessment, there is a whole host of other things that I want to write about. I don’t really know where to start, but I’m going to have a go, because I think it may help me to get some of these thoughts down at last.

I need to start giving myself some more time. I’ve taken a twitter hiatus lately to try and free up some time, but it doesn’t seem to have made any difference. If I was spending an hour a day or whatever (probably more like 3 if I’m honest!) on twitter, I want to know why I don’t have an extra hour spare each day?

I am not sure if I prefer to have twitter in my life or not. Leaving twitter should at least reduce the number of arguments with the bloke – twitter is quite often the trigger for them, but whether or not it really has remains to be seen. He will probably just find something else to criticise. If he gets to win the argument on twitter, he will go back to trying to get me to completely stop blogging as well.

It should in theory give me more time to do other things, but I don’t think it has made much difference. It is very much true that whatever you have to do, will always expand itself to fill however much time you have to do it in. It is the same in that I haven’t worked for 2 years, yet I seem to have filled my time with other things. I don’t quite know how I would squeeze work back into my life, although I’d work out how to somehow I guess.

I do feel like I’ve lost something without twitter. It gave me two things. A feed of interesting information about the world in general and a more personal support group from the madosphere. I am missing both of these for different reasons.

The lack of general stuff leaves me feeling just a little bit behind. Twitter is great in that it can keep you up to date with things, real time. I have to go to more effort to find out things and to keep on top of the latest goings on. If a band that I follow releases tour dates, they will usually tweet about it. Now I have to wait until I spot them on some listings or on their website. If someone posts a news story about something I’m interested in, chances are I’d see a link to it on twitter pretty quickly. I am having to pay more attention on BBC News to spot things of interest. I guess I can do without this info, but when you are used to having it fed to you all the time, it is weird to go back to having to look for it. Twitter is certainly convenient. You can pretty much find anything on there if you wanted.

I am missing the support group side of things too. I feel that by stepping away I am neglecting people and I really don’t want to do that. I hope that people don’t take my hiatus to mean I am not interested in them or don’t care about them any more. It is not about that at all. I feel like I am letting people down by not being there all the time. Of course I miss receiving the support of my twitter friends too. It is nice to know that there is nearly always someone out there to talk to if you feel like it. It makes the world a little less lonely.

I do miss it, but a lot less than I thought I would to be honest. I can live without it, which maybe surprises me a little. It is convenient though

I don’t know if I will go back, stay away longer or perhaps just change how I use it. Maybe I will go private for a bit? I don’t know. If you are waiting for me to go back though, don’t hold your breath.

I didn’t start out with this post to write about my twitter hiatus, but there we go. It was something I wanted to explain on my twitter feed, but hardly possible with 140 characters. At least by saying it here, I can feel like I haven’t gone without explaining myself.

_______

So what else is there?

Physically, I am struggling. I have been suffering with persistent “tummy trouble” and irritable bowel issues lately. It has been there for months now. I was too embarrassed to say much at first (no one really wants to share their toilet habits do they?) and I thought it would improve, but it just got worse and worse and has been making things pretty rough. Constipation, diarrhoea, both, often with urgency, occasional vomiting, frequent nausea, awful tummy cramps that rival the worst period pain, chest tightness/pain, bloating and lack of appetite… None of which are particularly fun and when it all happens at once it makes you feel pretty awful.

Dr N and I are both pretty sure it is the Reboxetine to blame. I saw the locum last week as Dr N has been on holiday for a few weeks. He got me to have a collection of blood tests to see if there was anything else to explain things, but they didn’t bring anything up. I phoned up for the results on Tuesday and the receptionist reeled off a long list of the ones that were clear, but said I should come in to see the doctor about my liver results. I had a suspicion that this would happen, as it has done in the past. Apparently, one of my liver hormone levels is slightly higher than it should be, but it has been for some time and it is actually a little better than it was earlier this year. The other doctor probably wasn’t aware of this, so wanted me to see a doctor, but Dr N wasn’t worried about it. He did tell me that I should really keep any drinking to a minimum though, as my liver will struggle with any heavy drinking. I don’t tend to drink very often or very much anyway, so this isn’t so much of a worry, but it is a little concerning if I am going to be taking this medication in the long-term. Dr N thinks it will go back to normal if/when I stop taking the Reboxetine and joked that I can hit the booze then, whilst chastising himself for being a bad doctor for saying so. I don’t relish the thought that my liver results make me look like an alcoholic though. It is probably worth trying to be careful for the time being, I guess.

When I last saw Dr N about 6 weeks ago or something, he started me on alverine citrate as an antispasmodic, but so far it hasn’t helped all that much. I am having a few less of the sudden desperate trips to the loo, but still struggling with the pain and diarrhoea/constipation a lot. Today, he’s decided to double the dose, so fingers crossed it will have some impact. I am not sure I can carry on with these kind of problems for much longer. How anyone survives a life of IBS, I have no idea. Hopefully for me this will be temporary and I guess if it is caused by the Reboxetine there is always the option of stopping the meds, but I am not sure I like that idea.

The only good thing about all of this is that I have lost quite a bit of weight. Although that possibly isn’t such a good sign for my health. I put on a stupid amount of weight at the start of this year. Considering I wasn’t eating that much because the food was disgusting, I think I put on about a stone whilst I was in hospital in January and that continued when I came out. I don’t actually know heavy I got, because I stopped getting on the scales when it went over a certain number. I have pretty much always been overweight, although it probably bothers me a lot less than it should do considering my weight is not good for my health. However, over the last 6 months my appetite has disappeared and the weight has been falling off, without much effort at all. I have been more active over the summer, especially when I was travelling, but I think the loss of appetite has made the biggest difference. I often feel too ill to eat and most of the time I could quite easily go all day without eating anything. I am fed, because the bloke does virtually all of the cooking, but if he wasn’t around I’d live on the occasional bit of toast or the odd crumpet. I have lost all of what I put on earlier this year and more. My weight has yo-yoed a lot, but I am now somewhere near the lowest weight I have been since I was about 17. Admittedly, I am still many stone overweight, but I have lost over two stone and getting on for three. My clothes which had all got too small are now all too big. I am fed up of having nothing which fits properly, but I don’t really want to spend too much on new clothes if my weight is still changing. I have cleared a lot of stuff out, but I am reluctant to get rid of stuff in case I put the weight back on. We shall see.

Unfortunately, the way I am feeling physically hasn’t been helping my mood at all. In general, my mood has been dropping off over the last couple months. I felt a lot better during the earlier half of the summer than I did in the latter half and I felt a lot better 8 weeks ago than I do at the moment. At first, there were just a few warning signs and I did my best to ignore them. Whenever I noticed them and started to worry, I tried to stop myself because I didn’t want it to be a self-fulfilling prophesy. Worry that I was getting worse, so I got worse. Unfortunately, that strategy doesn’t seem to have helped much, as my mood seems to have dropped regardless.

I haven’t wanted to tell anyone that I am not feeling so good. I am disappointed that my recovery has stalled and almost feel ashamed. I wanted this time to be the time where I get well and stay well. Instead it’s a return to the old “one step forward, two steps back”. I am worried that if I am getting depressed again, then maybe I am to blame for it all. I wish I had made more of the time when I was well, because I don’t think I really appreciated how much better and easier things were.

I hadn’t wanted to write about it here, because I was worried about what the bloke would think, but he had noticed the drop in my mood, despite my best effort to carry on and pretend that nothing had changed. I didn’t and still don’t want to worry him. I do not want to go back to how things were when I was really ill.

I wasn’t sure I was going to tell Dr N today, but he knows me too well now and I think he could tell before I even said anything. I was there about the tummy trouble, but he asked me about my mood and I couldn’t tell him that all was fine. He seemed sad and a little concerned, but he was reassuring too. I think I feel a little better now that I am not hiding it so much.

Thankfully, although things have dropped off, they are still better than they were a year ago or back in January. Most of the time they are still a lot, lot better, but I’ve been having some bad days. Last Wednesday was really rough. I felt truly awful all day. Cried on and off for most of it and at one point instead of sorting out the huge mountain of washing I’d put on the bed, I just lay down next to it and crawled under the covers for a while so I didn’t have to face it. I pretty much cried myself to sleep, but then woke up in a panic that I had less time to get everything done. We had guests around for dinner that evening and the house was a mess, so there was plenty to do.

Unlike usually when I have been depressed, I am not especially suicidal. The thoughts come and go, but it is not like before. I was chronically and painfully suicidal for so long, I thought it would never go away, but it did. Over the summer, I stopped wanting to kill myself. I had started to see the point in life and recognised that I could have a future where I didn’t feel at mercy to my moods or awful all the time. Thankfully, despite the fact I have felt pretty low at times, the suicidal ideation hasn’t come back with such ferocity. I think I have retained the hope that I can be well again. I had lost that before, but Reboxetine has given me that back. I thought I was always going to feel so depressed that I didn’t see any point in life. There are times when I feel like that again. When I think about relapse, I get so frustrated that again I am going backwards. This makes me feel pretty hopeless and I wonder what all the point is. I sometimes just want to throw in the towel and give up, but I am resisting. Occasionally, I do want to die. A lot of the time I don’t really care if I live. Even when I have been well, that hasn’t really completely gone away, but I am managing. The thoughts pass and for now I can handle them. Hopefully, it will stay that way.

I told Dr N today that I do think there is something in the seasons. He has asked me in the spring when I started to feel better if I thought there was and I said I didn’t know. When the Reboxetine showed the first signs of helping earlier this year, it was at the same time as the weather improved, so we weren’t sure if it was one or the other or both. Often my worst times have actually been in Spring, when most people are starting to feel better. However, I think about it now and I think the seasons do have some form of effect. My mood has definitely dropped in September/October for the last three years. Last summer I was better than I had been during the rest of the year (although still much, much worse than I was this year), but things went downhill from September. The year before was generally awful from June onwards, but it wasn’t until September that things completely fell apart and I first ended up in The Priory in October ’08. I used to struggle in October whilst I was at school too, but I always put that down to an increased workload and the fact it was usually a time for deadlines and the ramping up of rehearsals for Christmas concerts and the like. So maybe there is something in it? I don’t know. I just hope that January/February 2011 isn’t as bad as 2009 or 2010.

Anyway, I see Dr M on Monday. Dr N told me to mention the seasonal thing. He said it is worth knowing and perhaps we should be aware of the rough cycle of my moods as it may help us pre-empt things. I have tried to be aware in the past, but it is hard when you often forget how you have felt before, even when you try and keep track.

He said that she may choose to raise the Reboxetine, but he is worried about the side effects. I had of course thought of this too. I considered doing it myself, but thought I had better see what she said first. I am worried about the side effects too. Things are so bad on that front, that it may not be wise. It’s a bit of a chicken and egg problem, because the side effects are making my mood worse, but to counteract that drop in mood, I will probably have to make the side effects worse. I don’t know what is worst. It’s a hard balance to strike. I don’t think I can tolerate the side effects getting any worse unfortunately. They are trying my patience enough as they are. I had hoped that when I was settled on these meds, the side effects would subside and although some of them have done, the tummy troubles just seem to get worse.

Anyway. I have written enough for now. This is a long post and I must try and get to bed. I have been waiting for the bloke to come home from playing computer games with friends, but he is not back yet.

I’ve had a lot of good days lately. My mood has picked up sufficiently that I am feeling almost “normal” at times now and certainly manageable at others. I have actually felt happiness or contentedness, something I wasn’t really sure was possible any more. My concentration has been improving and my confidence is growing.

I have started to contemplate the idea that I may finally be heading towards some form of recovery. Maybe, just maybe, we have found the drug that works, despite the problematic side effects.

I have been foolish though in thinking the bad days had passed. I had hoped that I wouldn’t feel that bad again, at least any time soon. I really didn’t feel good yesterday. I woke up feeling low and felt worse as the morning went on. For the first time in a while I felt seriously suicidal, as opposed to the passing thoughts that had been floating around, but which I could brush off relatively easily. I was having to really fight the urge to just thrown in the towel. I felt anxious and uneasy. I’ve been struggling with strange dreams and nightmares lately and they were bothering me. Everything just felt wrong somehow. I wanted to crawl back in to bed and hide there. It felt like nothing had changed. I thought I was past all that, but I was wrong.

Things did start to improve again yesterday evening, but I am feeling a little shaky still. I feel like I’ve been knocked off balance and I’m struggling to right myself.

I am trying to tell myself that this is normal, recovery isn’t a smooth process and bad days are to be expected, but it doesn’t ease the disappointment. Telling myself this didn’t make yesterday any easier.

I hope that things will pick up again, but I am worried that this will set me back. One of the things I struggle most with is the idea that I will never be completely well again and there is always a fear of relapse. A bad day is like a mini relapse and it makes me question if it is all worth it. What is the point in carrying on, if in 6 months, a year, 20 years I end up severely depressed again and try to kill myself? My thinking may be screwed up, but I just wonder if I may as well get it over with.

I had been thinking about going back to work. I do miss it and I’ve been missing it even more when I’ve felt okay. I wonder why I am not there. I know I have only just seen Occy Health and I agree that I’m probably not ready to go back just yet, but I was starting to think that I will be able to do it. Even 3 or 4 weeks ago when I was there, I doubted it would ever be possible. A run of good days has made me think it is, but this bad one has put the doubt back. I worry that it would only take a couple of bad days at work and I would be back where I was before.

I’m still really struggling with the future. I panic when I think about what lies ahead. I am scared of therapy. I am scared of going back to work. I am scared that I will relapse. I am scared of commitment in all shapes and forms. I am scared of getting married. I am scared of buying a house. I am scared of getting old.

I am frustrated, because I was meant to be seeing Dr M on Thursday and I got a phone call today to say she has cancelled. I am disappointed, as after yesterday I felt I could really do with seeing her again soon. I wanted to discuss the Reboxetine. I think it is time to increase it to the “therapeutic dose” (4mg b.d.). I hope that those extra 2mgs will be enough to stave off the bad days. I just hope it isn’t enough to tip the side effects into not-worth-it territory. She was also going to discuss what we can do to ease the side effects, particularly looking at sleep again – the insomnia is the biggest problem. I quite wanted to know what ideas she had come up with since I’d last seen her.

I now have to wait another 2 weeks. It is going to end up being 6 weeks between appointments by the time I eventually see her and we were aiming for every 2-3 weeks, so that’s not so good. It may still be better than the CMHT, but I could have done with seeing her sooner.

I guess I will just have to manage how I am. We will see what happens. I’d like some more good days.

I’ve been taking Reboxetine for a couple of months now. I started on a stupidly low dose and even with that I started to struggle with side effects. It has been increased a couple of times now and the side effects are a nightmare… BUT I THINK IT IS WORKING!

Reboxetine is meant to be taken in divided doses; 4mg morning, 4 mg at night, but I haven’t even got that far yet because of the side effects. One of the biggest problems is insomnia. I started on 2mg in the morning which wasn’t so bad, but then they needed to add the night time dose and that pretty much stopped me sleeping at all. I couldn’t even tolerate taking 2mg at night without it keeping me awake. So they decided to move the full 4mg dose to the morning, which was a little better. I still wasn’t sleeping very well (around 4 hours a night), but it didn’t seem to make things much worse than normal.

The dose was increased though about 3 weeks ago and we now have a problem. I can’t really take a larger dose all at once because Reboxetine has a fairly short half life and wears off pretty quickly. It was suggested I took 4mg in the morning and 2mg at lunchtime. The problem with the lunchtime dose is I often forget. If I’m out and about I don’t normally remember to take it with me or even if I’m home I keep telling myself I’ll go take it and never do. If I end up taking it mid-afternoon or evening I have a nightmare trying to get to sleep. If I take it late at night I usually get to sleep initially, but wake up an hour or two later and spend the rest of the night awake. Even if I take it at the right time I still have a problem sleeping. The only time I seem to be able to sleep properly is around 7am-10am in the morning when the meds have worn off, when ideally I should be getting up. I am struggling with the lack of sleep and I’m pretty sure it isn’t helping ease my headaches.

Aside from the insomnia there is a plethora of other side effects to contend with:

Sweats are a big problem and at times I get so hot I seem to start shaking or I feel faint and dizzy. This happens even when it is really cold outside and I’m wearing short sleeves. I must look ridiculous going around in short sleeves when everyone else is wrapped up in coats and scarves. I end up carrying my coat around everywhere because I can’t bear to wear it, but that means I get wet!

The Reboxetine has killed my appetite too. At the moment it is not unusual for me to eat nothing all day, for my bloke to cook me dinner and for me to eat half of it and then give up. The only thing I seem to want to eat is sugar. Everything else makes me feel sick, especially chicken for some reason. I don’t know if that has something to do with the fact I spent a weekend throwing up a couple weeks ago and one of the things I’d eaten was a chicken slice, but it’s a little annoying. I’m fed up of the nausea. It does have an upside though. I have lost a bit of weight over the past couple of weeks, although I’m sure if I wasn’t just eating sweet things then I probably would have lost more. I may be eating less than normal, but I think I probably eat healthier than this usually.

I am still getting the occasional attack of upper abdomen/chest pain too. It was assumed this was down to acid reflux and it does seem to have eased off over the past couple of weeks, so maybe the omeprazole has helped on that front. I just hope it doesn’t get worse now that I’ve completed the course of meds.

Add the common medication annoyances of constipation and dry mouth to the list and you have a pretty comprehensive list of side effects. The stuff is making me feel pretty rubbish, on the physical side at least.

The side effects do seem to ease off a little when my body has had a chance to get used to the dose, but it is really not fun in the meantime. Dr M is pretty concerned about the side effects too. She has been reluctant to increase the dose each time I’ve seen her, although she knows she needs to. I’m not even on the recommended dose yet (4mg b.d.) and she thinks I will probably need a high dose eventually, so that means I’ve got a few more of these increases to tolerate. I hope that by persevering the worst will pass, but I know that every time the dose is increased again, all the nasty side effects will be back worse than ever. I don’t know if I can handle it getting any worse. I almost wonder if she should just stick the dose up to full strength and see what happens. I think I’d rather feel absolutely dreadful for a couple of weeks, rather than pretty rubbish for a couple of months. I just don’t know if I’d tolerate it or not.

Dr M even seems to be considering taking me off the Reboxetine because of the side effects, but I am loathe to give up on it yet. I can feel it improving my mood and that is a big thing for me. It is the only antidepressant to have done that without sending me completely doolally. I have tried so many different antidepressants and other medications that I had kinda given up on the idea that I’d ever find something to lift my mood. This has changed that. I now have some hope that medication may eventually help me.

I hate though that I find something that may actually help my mind and my sodding body won’t tolerate it. If I find something my body can tolerate, it does nothing for my mind. Why can’t I have both? There must be some meds out there that will work and not make me feel ill?

So, yes. The side effects may be doom and gloom, but I do think it is working. My concentration is improving and I feel able to do more. I don’t actually mind getting up in the morning now. I may be knackered from the lack of sleep, but at least when I wake up I am not filled with this absolute dread of facing another day. It may sound clichéd, but I feel a little lighter. I don’t feel like I am being crushed by this overwhelming sadness any more. Things are by no means fixed, but they are definitely better than they were.

The intrusive thoughts are less and have changed too. I sadly can’t report that the suicidal thoughts are completely gone, but they are different and less often. Before, I had reached a point where I was absolutely certain that death was the only sensible option. It was all that I could think about and it didn’t matter what I was doing or how busy I was, it would be in my mind and it was the ultimate goal. I wanted to die and I spent all day thinking about how I was going to do it as quickly and painlessly as possible.

I am not certain any more though. I still find life and the future pretty hard to comprehend, but I don’t see suicide as inevitable now. I am still struggling to resist the urge to just give up on everything, but I haven’t already given up. The thoughts are mainly impulsive ones now, rather than the pervasive ones that were there before. Generally, the thoughts are kept at bay when I am busy and they only really hit me when I am anxious or upset, or at night when I am struggling to sleep and have time to think. I am keeping myself busy to push the thoughts back, but I can’t do that forever.

When I do stop to think, I am scared. I am scared that it won’t take much to push me back down the slope. What if I have to stop taking the Reboxetine because of the side effects? Will I get worse again? What if I don’t keep getting better? Will I give up again in frustration? What if I just give in to the impulsive thoughts that linger? What if, what if, what if?

I am scared by the thought of recovery. I am frightened by the future. I have spent so long assuming there is no future, it is impossible to know what to do with one. I don’t know how to live my life if I actually get it back. Dr M and New Social Worker ask me what I want to happen in a month, 6 months, a year’s time and I have no idea. I have no real aspirations because I have given up on them all.

I wrote about wanting to go back to work, but I am not sure I can actually do it. It is too hard to comprehend. I have been off for so long I don’t know if I can remember what it is like to work. Illness, ECT and medication have all messed with my brain and I don’t even know if it functions enough for me to work anymore. I feel so stupid and slow these days.

I am worried that I am not strong enough to recover. I am scared of therapy. I worry that it will make me so much worse in the short term that I won’t be able to cope. I don’t even know what it is meant to achieve. If my mood is improving with the medication, maybe it is more down to chemicals than Dr M is willing to admit? I know there are other problems, but I don’t know how therapy is going to help. I don’t even know if or when it will ever happen. I’ve been waiting so long it is pretty hard to imagine ever coming to the top of the list!

I feel like a coward. It seems so much easier to just give into the suicidal thoughts even now. I know things are improving, but I am too scared of what lies ahead. I have got so used to the idea of suicide that it is almost comforting. It is strange. Suicide is a coping method, as much as a get out clause.

I know I just have to face it. I know I need to stop worrying and thinking about it, but I can’t help it. I guess everyone facing the idea of recovery has these thoughts. I have been trying to ignore them, but they have been niggling away at me.

I have to fight these thoughts. They fuel the negative and intrusive thoughts that linger. I am trying.

I really am so busy at the moment. I have a list of 101 things I need or want to do and although I seem to be doing lots, the list isn’t getting any shorter. I feel a little like I’m drowning in it all, but I am trying to keep going.

I’ve been at various appointments over the past couple of weeks (Occy Health, Dr M, Dr N, New Social Worker etc). We took our dog to Crufts a couple of weeks back. We had the Creative Remedies exhibition launch last week and I was busy getting things ready for that. We’ve had a couple of circle meetings. I’m on the committee for the local Youth & Community Centre, so have been doing bits and pieces for them. My little sister turned 21 last weekend, so we went home for the weekend. I’m helping get things ready for the event in the village on Easter Monday. It’s been a bit crazy really and there is plenty still to come.

The busyness is generally distracting me from how I am feeling. When I’ve seen Dr M and Dr N they ask me how I am and all I can say is “busy”. I feel pretty disconnected from my mood and emotions at the moment. I am too busy doing to think. I don’t know if that is a good thing or not. I guess at least it means that the blackness isn’t all encompassing at the moment. The thoughts are pushed back and less intrusive than they were.

If I do stop to think though, I feel a little overwhelmed and anxiety hits me. I’m worried I’m pushing myself too hard or taking on too much. I worry that things will fall apart or my mood will fall off a cliff and I will have to drop everything, letting loads of people down. I worry that I will give in to the impulsive thoughts and just give up on everything.

I also worry about things going the other way. I worry that if things improve and I get well enough to go back to work, I won’t have time for everything. I’m involved with loads of voluntary things at the moment and although I know I can’t do it all, I don’t want to stop doing them and I don’t want to let people down.

Back in December/January when I was planning my suicide attempt, I found that one thing which held me back was knowing that people were relying on me to do things and I didn’t want to let them down. It wasn’t enough to stop me, but it did make me think twice. I guess by committing to more things, I am putting up plenty of barriers to keep me here. I just hope it works that way and doesn’t have the opposite effect of overwhelming me and making me just give up.

I guess the fact I am hoping this will keep me here shows there has been an improvement over the past couple of months. I am not sure how much I truly hope, but I know a few months ago it was impossible for me to hope for life at all. All I hoped for was death and as fast as possible. I am not entirely sure what I want now, but life feels like an option again and that’s got to mean something.

This was going to be part of a much longer blog post, but it is long enough already and it may be better for me to stick to one topic per post. I have quite a lot to catch up on and it will be quicker if I do a bit at a time! So busy that I am finding it hard to find the time to write, even though I really want to.